Australian music of the 1960's

Rock n' Roll, the new craze!

The 1960's were known as one of the greatest musical and revolutionary decades of the 20th century. It was a time of experimenting with sythesizers and electronic music. Experimenting included developing a new pop culture out of rhythm and blues, which was strongly influenced by British bands and 'Black-American music' such as the 'Rolling stones' and the 'Animals'. Australian music during the 1960s contrasted in many kinds, including Rock n' roll, Jazz, Pop and Folk/western. It was also the time of the anti-war movement strongly influenced by the Americans and their artists eg Bob Dylan. 'Beatle-mania' was the main music-fever that had spread across teenagers in the United States, Britain and Australia. Screaming fans mobbed Ringo, Paul, George and John everywhere they went.

Give Peace A Chance

During the mid 1960's, before psychedelic rock and filtered into Australia. An 'anti-war'protest started forming in the United States, later to be spread to other countries around the world. The people in these Anti-war communes believed that 'conscription' was an unfair way of getting people to join the army to be involved in the Vietnam War. As the protest started to gain popularity, many Australians became involved and became part of the 'peace' revolution. During this time, British artists began writing songs songs relating to 'peace' and 'anti-war'. A few of the major 'peace'songs that exploded into Australia were by the Beatles who were (at the time) beginning to experiment with more complex harmonies and structure. 'Give peace a chance' and 'All you need is love' instantly became popular among the youth revolution, sending out the message that love conquers war. The era of the hippie revolution had come to it's became more about peace and music.

Phychedelic Rock, A New Beginning

Phychedelic Rock was a mind altering style of Rock. The lyrics of this new style experimented with drug references and introduced more people to marijuhana. The new characteristics of this style involved more 'studio effects' and more complex structures eg extended guitar solos and added in the sound track to change the to a more complex version of rock. The time-signature changed more often with extra guitar distortion eg 'wah box' and amplified bass.

In Australia (1966), a band of immigrants formed a band called the 'Easybeats' and began writing their own version of psychedelic rocksongs.

Alex: In your own words, describe music in the 60's when you lived in Australia?

Ganyk: The music was immense and took many directions. It became a focus for the youth-revolution. They could all find their own music as it was present in many forms. ' Rock and roll', 'r and b', 'pop', 'ballad', soul/motown and country/western were the main styles that took off. Local bands copied the style of overseas bands and soon an Australian music scene sudently developed.

Alex: How did this music influence your life?

Ganyk: The Beatles brought in style and looks which most of my friends copied and grew our hair long. Music almost become symbolic of the youth culture and independence of thinking. My parents however disliked the new wave of music, preffering their old style of polka dancing and waltz. My high school (Doors Road High School) had a policy that side burns had to be cut at a shorter length. I was taken out of class for 3 days because of my slightly longer sideburns.

Alex: What kind of music styles did you prefer?

Ganyk: Rhythm and blues and rock. I liked how Santana expanded latin music into rock. I very much liked the 'Beatles' because they constantly looked at changing their style of music and had broad under standing of it. 'Eric Burdon and the Animals', introduced the organ to their pop/rock style which I think worked really well. Van Morrison consistantly produced very catchy and cool style to his music. From an Australian point of view, the 'Twighlights' wer